


Missing Pieces

by ohmyfae



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Claude’s siblings and other family members, Claude’s wyvern, Claude’s wyvern is basically a cat and a dragon, Gen, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: On the day Khalid turns thirteen, he wakes up to a wyvern chewing the curtains, and soon discovers that all of his favorite possessions are going missing.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 56





	Missing Pieces

On the day the crown prince of Almyra turns thirteen years old, he wakes up to the sound of something snuffling in the bed curtains.

Khalid flails in his tangled mess of sheets and pillows, grabs a stuffed lion his mother gave him when he was four, and throws it directly at the dark shape behind his pale yellow curtains. There’s a squawking sound and a series of high, fast clicks, and sharp teeth dig into the curtains and drag them off the bedpost.

“Altaira!” Khalid scrambles off his bed as his wyvern, gangly and long-limbed in her adolescence, happily rips his bed curtains to pieces. She’s hanging half over one of his floor-to-ceiling windows, heavy talons digging into the stone, and she tilts her head at Khalid and flutters the spines at the base of her neck. After six years of training her, Khalid knows this is her _let’s play!_ face, but he picks up the stuffed lion and wags it at her like a spear.

“No,” he says, as Altaira slowly chomps on the curtains, watching the lion move. “I said no. Put it down.”

His wyvern tries to whistle at him through the cloth and kicks her back legs against the wall outside. Her wings flap excitedly, and the walls shake and the windows rattle like the palace is being battered by a summer storm. Khalid’s painstakingly painted figures of mythological Almyran heroes go toppling to the rug, the rack with his birthday robes collapses, and Altaira drops the curtains to screech happily, cracking the mirror on the other side of the room.

“Altaira, _no,_ ” Khalid shouts, and his voice cracks and booms, ending in an indignant squeak. Altaira twists her head almost upside down, more owl then wyvern, then darts forward, snatches the curtains, and wriggles out of the room. She drops like a stone, still too young to have really mastered flying like the war wyverns in the aerie, and Khalid goes racing to the window, craning to look.

“Flap your wings!” he shouts. A servant walking along the open-air stairway beneath his window looks up and shields her eyes from the sun as Khalid starts swinging his arm. “Open! Your! Wings!”

“Young prince!” the servant calls, as Altaira snaps her wings open just in time to miss colliding with a fountain. “This is not how a man of Almyra should behave!”

Khalid looks down at her. Her white gown means she’s one of his mother’s’ servants, maybe even a noble, but he doesn’t recognize her. “Sorry, Auntie,” he says. “My wyvern came by to wish me a happy birthday, I guess.”

She squints up at him, her face unreadable, and continues walking along the stair. The outer stair of the palace is terrifying, with just a railing on one side to keep anyone from toppling over, but she walks down it with all the grace and dignity of a queen. Khalid sighs and steps back so he can close his window.

The bed is a mess. Altaira flew off with half the curtains, and the sheets are all knotted up and sliding off one side of the mattress, like Khalid was just kidnapped by Fodlan invaders and dragged off to the Throat. He considers this for a minute, wonders if he can get away with hiding long enough to convince his parents that something really _did_ happen, but the servant will probably ruin the surprise. He tidies the bed as much as he can, throws the lion in the middle of it, and goes to pick up his birthday robes.

He’s been looking forward to thirteen for months. Twelve is… babyish, really. No one listens to you when you’re twelve. They certainly don’t listen to Khalid. Every time he tries to say one of his cousins tried to lock him in a closet or his brother Tariq won’t even talk to him anymore or one of the generals, Iyad, mutters things about _dogs_ and _Fodlaners_ every time he pipes up at council, people say he’s just overreacting. But thirteen is practically fourteen, which is almost sixteen, which is right on the edge of not being a teen at all, really, so eventually, someone’s going to have to listen.

And they’ll definitely listen when Khalid is wearing this, his lovely gold and green robe with embroidered wyverns on the back, covering a cream tunic and quilted pants that he shoves in his second best boots. 

Which. It’s odd, because his _first_ best boots should be there.

Khalid definitely laid them out under the robes last night. He checks under the rack just in case, searches his clean, tidy room to see if they rolled off somewhere while Altaira was menacing his curtains, and even digs through his closet. But they’re nowhere, and neither is his favorite scarf, also gold and green and soft as silk. Khalid makes do with a plain gold one, runs to the bathroom to freshen up properly and check his hair, and heads over to Tariq’s room to pound on his door.

Tariq pulls his door open a few inches and blinks up at Khalid slowly. “What do _you_ want?”

“My scarf,” Khalid says. “And my boots. Give them back, I know you have them.”

“Why would I want anything _you’ve_ put _your_ dirty hands all over?” Tariq says. Khalid scowls. “Just because it’s your birthday doesn’t mean you have the right to boss everyone around, _your royal highness._ ”

“Shut up, you’re a royal highness, too,” Khalid says, which isn’t what a mature, worldly prince should say, but Tariq always gets him riled up like this. Khalid just doesn’t get it. They _used_ to get along. They _used_ to be _friends._ But now Tariq just snarls at him and abandons him when Khalid tries to talk, and he’s always hanging around General Iyad and his cronies like they’re the ones who used to read to him when he was sick and push him into fountains.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Tariq says. “Go away, Khalid.”

“Look, just give them back,” Khalid says. “Stuff’s been going missing in my room for a while, Tariq, and I’ve tried to be nice about it, but. But it isn’t funny. Just hand it all over and we can… I’ll spring for us to go to the opera. The one about the Fodlan kings who were always trying to kill each other.”

“Yeah, you’d like that,” Tariq says. “I didn’t steal anything from you. Why would I? You have everything you’ll ever want.”

Then he slams the door in Khalid’s face, leaving him breathless and red-cheeked, tears smarting in the corner of his eyes. He slaps them away and heads over to his littlest brother Zahir’s room instead.

“Khalid! Happy birthday!” Zahir is six, with big wide eyes and a mop of curly black hair. He hugs Khalid around the waist, and for some reason that’s… worse than Tariq slamming the door, because Khalid has to squeeze his eyes shut and take a breath before he can even look at Zahir without feeling all wobbly and shaken loose. 

“Thanks,” Khalid says, and his voice breaks _again,_ which is wildly unfair. “How’re you doing, Zahir?”

“I’ve been awake for, for, for…” Zahir whips around to look at his mother, Salma, who is Khalid’s second mother by marriage and the most patient woman on earth. She smiles thinly from her seat in the rocking chair.

“Seven hours,” she says. Khalid winces.

“I made you a gift,” Zahir says. He grabs Khalid’s hand and tows him over to Salma, and Khalid bows and kisses her on the cheek. She kisses him back and pats his temple.

“Do you want me to watch him for you?” Khalid asks, even though it _is_ his birthday and he really just wants to see if his father got him that bow he wanted. Salma’s eyes gleam.

“Aren’t you a man, now,” she says, and Khalid beams at her. “No, I’m just giving Tiana time to prepare your… well. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Here!” Zahir shoves a paper in Khalid’s hand. It’s incomprehensible. There’s a blot that might be a person, and a bigger blot with spikes coming out of it, and a sun Khalid is pretty sure Salma drew. “It’s you and Altaira.”

“Oh,” Khalid says. “Wow, Zahir. You’re a real artist.”

“I am!” Zahir says, bouncing on his toes. “Khalid?”

Khalid rolls the paper back up and ruffles Zahir’s hair. “Yeah, buddy?”

Zahir looks up at him, honestly written all over his round face. “I love you.”

Khalid blushes, knowing his mom is watching, and mumbles, “Love you, too.”

He checks Zahir’s room while his brother bounces around, showing him toys Khalid’s known about his whole life, but none of his missing things are there. It’s just a nursery, with Zahir’s toys strewn about and books falling off the shelf. 

Which means the thief could be anyone. Or Tariq.

“You should see your mother and father, Khalid,” Salma says. “Except. Not now. In… an hour.”

Khalid grins. “Father _did_ get me a bow, then.”

“I have said nothing,” Salma says, primly, and Khalid runs over to kiss her on the cheek again, which makes her laugh. “Go on. Occupy yourself somewhere for a while. Take Tariq to the wyverns, perhaps.”

Khalid forces his smile not to fade. “When he wakes up, mother.” Then he bows, waves to Zahir, and goes trotting out the door.

There’s still the thief to worry about, though, even if Khalid is about to get a brand new bow from the best armory in Almyra, just like a real soldier. He smiles at the servants and nobles he passes by in the corridors, even the ones who look at him like he’s something they scraped off the sole of their sandals, and takes the outer stair to the stables.

It’s a perfect summer day in West Almyra, hot and bright, with a low wind that rustles the leaves of the wyrm nests under the gutters of the palace. There’s one just a few floors up, and Khalid leans on the rail to watch one of the slender, ribbon-like pseudo-wyverns weave about in the shadow of the palace roof. He whistles, and they all whistle back, dozens of them, little ribbon wyrms clicking and whistling like broken recorders. He whistles again, loud and high.

“Young prince!” a man shouts from the stair above him, and Khalid ducks his head and goes barreling down the stairs. It reminds him of the times he and Tariq used to take the stairs to the roof at night, carrying baby Altaira between them, so they could eat stolen leftovers from dinner and tell stories about the stars.

“Well,” Khalid says, as he stumbles, panting, to a stop at the base of the palace. “At least Altaira’s still my friend. Even if she _does_ eat the curtains.”

Khalid strolls through the thick grass by the wyvern pens, which are built into a huge circular building with a roof that folds back so the wyverns can fly around when they aren’t being put through their paces. Khalid stops by a trellis to pick the stem of a honeysuckle flower and taste the nectar, subtle and sweet, while his father’s enormous wyvern soars over the palace. He’s a black wyvern, with gold-painted tack that shines in the sun, and his name is Khalid, too.

Khalid’s a little unsure about being named after a _wyvern,_ but he can kind of get it. Wyverns are beautiful, and powerful, and sure, kind of silly, but Khalid’s father says they’re the heart of Almyra, and Khalid loves his wyvern almost as much as his father loves his. 

“Khalid,” says the wyvern master, when Khalid approaches the gate. He never calls him highness or crown prince, but he doesn’t call the king your majesty, either, so it isn’t personal. “Your wyvern, she is inside. Restless. You will fly her today.”

“Sure,” Khalid says. The wyvern master stares down at him from under wild, bushy brows.

“I hear it is your birthday.” He nods. “Good. I have ordered the girl to clean the stall this afternoon, so you do not have to.”

“Oh.” Khalid actually likes his chores in the aerie, but he smiles anyways. “Thank you, sir.”

The wyvern master just grunts, and Khalid trots inside, where wyverns whistle and click and trill from their pens, some of them lying on their eggs, some rolling with all their limbs hanging limp in the air, dreaming of hunting eagles. Altaira’s pen is in the shade, and all Khalid can see is a big lump wriggling in the hay. He frowns, jumps the fence into the pen, and stares at the hay pile.

“Altaira,” he says.

Altaira whistles. The hay rustles ominously.

Khalid whistles back, and Altaira clicks and her tail thwaps against the wall, spraying hay in the air. She pops up out of the hay, mouth open in a toothy wyvern grin, and Khalid snorts as she shakes her head like a horse shooing flies.

His favorite scarf is wound in her antlers, gold and green flashing as she wriggles in the hay.

“Where’d you get that, you silly thing?” Khalid asks, and steps forward. Altaira shuffles, tapping her talons on the ground, back and forth, back and forth. When Khalid reaches up to unhook the scarf, she noses at his chest, making him laugh, and lifts him a few inches off the ground.

“Woah, girl,” Khalid says. He whips the scarf free, and Altaira shoves him into the hay. She keeps shoving, over and over, until she pushes Khalid onto his backside with an enormous push, and Khalid lands in the hay with a clatter.

Except… hay shouldn’t clatter.

Khalid looks down and freezes, gaping, as Altaira preens and shakes her head at him, begging for pets. Underneath him are his best pair of boots. The broken candelabra that went missing off the shelf last week. His stuffed wyvern toy. A book, half chewed and damp. The curtains. Everything that’s gone missing over the past few weeks shifts under him, and Khalid looks up at Altaira to find her trying to nudge him around, positioning him just right on her hoard.

He’s heard of wyverns having hoards before. They all do. His mother’s wyvern once had a penchant for stealing soap. His father’s still tries to steal armor. But right now, surrounded by all his stolen things, placed square in the middle of Altaira’s hoard, he realizes that out of everything in the world, Altaira has picked Khalid as the thing she loves the most.

He pushes away wetness in his cheeks as Altaira trills at him, and wraps his arms around her neck. She rests her chin on his shoulder and snaps at his hair.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “This is the best birthday present anyone can give me. Even better than a bow.”

Altaira whistles and shuffles in the hay, clicks at him fondly, and, as Khalid wipes tears out of his eyes and smiles at her, promptly tries to sit on him.

So. Maybe not the best present, really. But still, Khalid thinks, as he rolls away from his ridiculous flying lizard and laughs until she stops trying to sit on her hoard and stares at him, head tilted, it’s definitely not that bad.


End file.
